As Emmylou Harris's Grammy-winning album Wrecking Ball is reissued, the singer
talks to Helen Brown about working with Daniel Lanois on the record that
redefined her career

Swinging out of nowhere, with a weight capable of punching a hole right through the soul, Emmylou Harris's 1995 album 'Wrecking Ball' redefined her career. Although it was her eighteenth solo record, she was still widely appreciated as a collaborator: first in the early Seventies as Gram Parsons's plaintive singing partner and later harmonising with Dolly Parton and Linda Ronstadt on 1987's best-selling 'Trio'. But the gritty ache of the Grammy-winning Wrecking Ball – reissued and remastered this month – allowed her to plant her cowgal boots firmly in the sand and take a sophisticated new stand as an innovative solo singer.

It turns out that she had been pushed to try something new. Her voice is a little croaky in the call from Nashville (after a long night travelling back from a benefit in Montana which ended with her singing with James Taylor and Shawn Colvin) as she explains that there had been "a lot of energy" behind the country singer's previous (conventional) release: 1993's 'Cowgirl's Prayer'. But that record was "stonewalled" by radio stations and flopped. "So the record company people came to me and said they were scratching their heads. They said: 'We probably need to do something completely different. What do you want to do?' And I said: 'I'd love to work with Daniel Lanois.'"

Described by Rolling Stone as "the most important record producer to emerge in the Eighties", Lanois had made his mark with a widescreen, reverb-charged sound he showcased on U2's 'The Joshua Tree', Peter Gabriel's 'So' and Bob Dylan's 'Time Out of Mind'. Lanois's trick is to put so much space around a sound that it ends up feeling intimate. The Canadian guitarist can make a drum kit sound as though its vibrations are thudding across hot continents into the tiny bones in your ears. Harris loved the work he had done with Dylan and checked out his solo work: "God! I had such an emotional reaction to those records. The sound! All of a sudden you were hearing in technicolour." I tell the Harris that I associated Lanois's pre-Wrecking Ball sound with a certain kind of masculine swagger: Bono's leather trousered yelp, Dylan's control, Gabriel's upfront sexuality. With 'Wrecking Ball' it sounded like Parsons's one-time sidekick was stepping confidently into man-sized sonic boots. I can almost hear Harris smile across the pond as she replies: "A male sound? Well, perhaps that's just because he hadn't recorded a woman before."

Lanois, who was also looking for "something new", flew to Nashville. In 2007, he told The Irish Times that he "got this feeling of old school dignity, this respect for American music, inside her house. I knew there were hidden secrets there that I was not hip to and I knew I’d come out of doing that record with something that I could learn from. That was the driving force for me. She played me a lot of songs that she had in demo form. The best ones were the ones where she was sitting there on her own with an acoustic guitar. She was embarrassed to play those ones, but I knew when I heard them that this was the album. I’d put a microphone in front of her as she sat in a chair and bring in other people around her in a horseshoe shape."

They selected songs by Neil Young, Richard Thompson, Bob Dylan, Gillian Welch and Jimi Hendrix. Songs which each seem to contain an even split of strength and ambiguity. Highlights include David Olney's insistent 'Deeper Well' (which appears in skittering, hoe-down form on a bonus disc of outtakes accompanying the reissue) and Steve Earle's 'Goodbye'.

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Although the Earle song was written about the Texas man's own heartache, it's hard for anybody aware of the Parsons/Harris mythology not to read their story into 'Goodbye'. As Harris' voice stretches out to ghostly horizons, you can picture the young folk singer meeting the wild country hippy. You dredge up the black and white stills of them harmonising. In recent years, she's been frank about the fact that, though nothing romantic happened between them, they were "heading in that direction". You can imagine her shock on hearing that he had died following a drink and drugs binge in 1973. You hear the sadness as she sings Earle's line: "I can't remember if we said goodbye."

Emmylou Harris during the Wrecking Ball sessions PHOTO: BOB LANOIS

She believes the song spoke to her deeply and on many levels. "You're right – I never did get a chance to say goodbye to Gram. But I also never got a chance to say goodbye to my father and a lot of other people in my life. With every year and every experience the heart grows and gets deeper. Music reflects that."

Earle went to New Orleans to play on the record. As did Young who sang on the title song (which he wrote) and added harmonica to Lucinda Williams' 'Sweet Old World'. Harris's voice blows through the whole album like a desert wind: lonesome and free. I tell Harris that Rufus Wainwright recently described her voice as "churchy, but you can just see he knickers". "You just try to find songs you can make shimmer," she says with a laugh.

And from recording all these cover songs, Harris drew strength to work on her own writing. She followed 'Wrecking Ball' with 'Red Dirt Girl' (2000), containing 11 original songs. "Dan told me I needed to write my next album," she says. "I wanted to continue that 'Wrecking Ball' sound but bring something different to it, so I made the conscious effort to take time off and try it. I still think of myself as an interpreter first and foremost but I think it is important, every once in a while, to return to your own writing."

Since the success of 'Wrecking Ball', Harris has won a further six Grammy awards, including the 2014 Best Americana Album award for her collaboration with Rodney Crowell on 'Old Yellow Moon'. "I've been really lucky in my career," she says. "Record companies have always let me do what I wanted and I've been surrounded by great people. That's one of the greatest things we can wish for in this life: to find satisfaction in our work. And I guess I was spoiled right out of the shoot!"